1. Part of the drama we're seeing today and on Wednesday is the inherent tension between a professional civil service and Trump's desire for for personal control of government ("The United States, c'est moi")
2. The grounds for impeaching Trump are that he used the office of president for corrupt ends. That's amply evident in the hearings. It's worth distinguishing Trump's corruption from the more proper authority a president has over civil service.
3. The American national security establishment is non-partisan but that doesn't mean it's non-political. It has a very strong institutional agenda. You don't get into this line of work if you aren't committed to a robust version American global hegemony.
4. It's okay for president's to use backchannels or to over-ride the national security establishment (as JFK did with missile crisis, as Nixon did with China, as Obama did with Syria & Ukraine).What's not okay is to do this for corrupt ends, as Trump has.
5. Some more thoughts on why we should disentangle the exact grounds for impeachment (corruption of the office) from larger debates about foreign policy. thenation.com/article/kent-t…
